We have three groups of people:

1) Pre-sales
2) Sales
3) Accounting & Support

These are our sales stages:

1) We collect leads. Some leads might be interested in our product some are not.

2) Pre-sales qualifies the leads. If there is a potential sale the lead becomes an opportunity and is turned over the a sales person.

3) The sales person tries to close the deal, makes quotes, etc. If the deal goes through the opportunity becomes an account. The account is turned over to accounting and support.

4) The accounting team handles payments and support the installation and support.

Considering this, pre-sales only handles/sees leads, sales only opportunities and accounting/support only accounts. For instance, we will hide all leads and opportunities from the support team and they only see accounts.

The problem is that Dynamics CRM seems to have a different concept, i.e. accounts are also used for potential customers. That would explain why an Opportunity can't be converted to an Account.

Obviously, we want the software to work according to our workflow. What is the best approach to do this (customization, etc)

Thanks